


Passing the Time

by arienai



Category: Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner, Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-07
Updated: 2013-12-07
Packaged: 2018-01-03 21:26:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1073237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arienai/pseuds/arienai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on the Chronicle Edition of Nocturne: Raidou and the Demi-fiend, what few things they have in common.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Passing the Time

**Author's Note:**

> Another years' old work from LJ I get requests for now and again.

The first time Raidou glimpsed so much as a crack in his client's ever-present mask of indiscriminate hostility was when the boy-turned-demon laid eyes on a dusty, battered cardboard box in the shape of a perfect cube. The hooded earthen construct - the inhabitants of this world called them 'manikins' - had puttered about for an eternity before he found it, rummaging through heaping mounds of clutter that the summoner would have dismissed as garbage as if each were the world's most precious treasure. 

His perseverance paid off, however; the manikin was rewarded with both a fistful of macca and a rare faint grin from his customer.

The boy felt his newest acquisition necessitated a halt to their journey; together they backtracked to the parking lot outside of Yurakucho Tunnel. Riddled with fissures and half-buried in sand, he mutely deemed it adequate to his purpose and dismissed his allies. Raidou was no demon, of course, and so could not be dismissed - instead he dutifully quelled his curiousity and laid out his neatly folded cape on the ground to serve as Gouto's bed. 

Inside the box was a round checkered ball. Which the half-demon extracted with the utmost reverence, then kicked against the wall. When it rolled back to him, he did it again.

And again.

And again.

He seemed neither to expect nor require any assistance in this particular task, and so the summoner sank down against the same wall some distance away to take up a task that provided him with a similar quality of entertainment: the inspection of his equipment. Raidou's gun appeared to be in good working order; though with the dust and wind-driven sand coating ever surface here so thickly dismantling it to be sure would be unwise at best, and like to get him scratched by his presently napping mentor for being a bloody fool at worst. 

Raidou's sword, on the other hand, could do with some oiling. Most likely. It couldn't hurt.

The earthly smell from the vial was a start contrast to heat-blasted barrenness of his surroundings; he took the utmost care not to spill a drop as he poured just enough to darken the rough silk cloth he carried. He folded it lightly over the blade just below the sword-guard, blunt side resting in his palm, and drew it cautiously down the full length, the tips of his thumb and fingers hooked in to reach the groove that divided the soft iron core from the hardened steel edge. Over and over, to the ceaseless hollow thud of leather against concrete.

At length, his ancestral weapon polished to a such a gleam that Kagutsuchi's white light reflected brightly enough off the blade to leave spots behind his eyes, Raidou glanced up again at last to determine whether or not his own nap might be in order.

In time to catch sight of the ball as it sailed back through the air well out of reach of the other boy's bare legs; instead, he hopped up to hit it with his forehead every ounce as hard. Straight up toward the blinding sky, and when it fell he caught it with a knee. Then the other knee, then the tips of his toes, then the top of his head, then the back of his ankle...

He noticed he was being watched, then, and caught it effortlessly in his hands, turning to Raidou. "You know what this is, don't you?"

Raidou Kuzunoha the Fourteenth was thankfully accustomed to such thoughtful questions from his infinitely more worldly employer, and so did not sigh. "Yes. It's a football."

"Uh... that's close, I guess." The half-demon turned the object in question over in his hands, tossing it absently. "It's a soccer ball. A football is more..." He gestured helpfully with his free hand.

"I'm aware." As it did not befit a summoner, Raidou Kuzunoha did not roll his eyes, either. At least, not in public. Instead he guided his blade back into his sheath with his thumb and snapped it past the sword catch, then laid it carefully beside the slumbering cat, and stood. "'Soccer' is an American word."

"Okaaay. So...?" 

"It's unpatriotic." 

The other boy cocked his head quizzically, one eyebrow raised. "And you seriously _care_?" 

Raidou gave him only a curt nod. Expounding upon the virtues of linguistic purity and national character were not part of his contract, nor were they likely to be the foremost issues on his client's mind at present.

"Wow. Okay. I, uh, don't want to spoil you or anything, but..." The boy scratched his head awkwardly. "Yeah. That whole Great Imperial Japan thing doesn't work out as well as you probably think it does."

"I'm _aware_." _This hourglass is chill to the touch, from hopelessness and mourning and deathly shock as millions of faces all as silent as the grave turn toward their radios. The broadcast is brief, and delivered in a voice most have never heard before but all recognize, for he uses words reserved for him and him alone for two thousand years. The words a descendant of the gods uses to surrender._

"Geez. Sorry." Raidou had never heard the boy apologize before; startling enough to realize how unrelenting his own expression has become. The other boy shifted from foot to foot, and tossed the ball again. "So. You wanna' play with my _foot_ ball?" 

He didn't, not terribly - the other boys at Yumizuki had done so for a time in the dusty school field, caught up in the furor that had gripped the Capital for a few short months over Japan's victory in the sport, though Raidou himself had never joined them - but it was not as if he had a great many other things to do. He nodded again.

The other boy bounced the ball off of his knee in a shallow arc in Raidou's direction; unsure of what to do with it, precisely, the summoner tried to return the gesture, only to have it drop at his feet. Undeterred, he kicked it back instead, which smarted his toes and sent it spinning off entirely the wrong way well out of the half-demon's reach. 

The other boy all but snorted in an attempt to suppress a snicker; by the time he caught it and dragged it back expertly with his heel he was doubled over with mirth. "Hahahah. Okay, so you've never kicked a soc-- _foot_ ball before. That's okay. I'll show you. And in your defense your shoes kinda' suck." 

Raidou thought his shoes were perfectly keen, but there was of course no accounting for taste. "See? Like this." The other boy tilted his foot downward, and hooked it under the ball. "Don't punt it with your toes. You kick with the bridge... sorta' scoop it." With that he sent it flying with a seemingly effortless gesture, hard enough to smack against the wall and ricochet right back to them; he kicked it out of the air and steadied it with the bottom his shoe.

Accustomed to being so drilled if nothing else, Raidou attempted the feat until he could manage it with some semblance of dignity. At least until it returned to him the full length of the way, even if it did so by rolling across the parking lot.

"Yeah, okay, you've got it. Like that. Cool!" The half-demon pumped his fist enthusiastically, then took an unsettlingly threatening step toward him. "Now try to keep me from taking it!"

Raidou put his foot on the ball, only to find it promptly swept out from under his heel. 

"Not like that." The other boy kicked it gently back. "Try to dodge. But you can't, like, touch it with your hands."

Raidou had gathered that much, but evidently his feet were not up to the task: the followed his every move and never once stumbled, even when sprinting past him at full speed he would somehow read the direction the summoner took and kick the ball away. Even when Raidou tossed off his jacket; even when Raidou kicked it up over his head - he would catch it right out of the air and back away with the prize underfoot, laughing.

"This is _impossible_." Raidou muttered at last, disgustedly. 

"That's because you've got no moves." The other boy chuckled, dragging the ball in a circle, backwards. "'S why you didn't catch me in the Labyrinth, either."

"I have _so_." Raidou was unsure of which moves to which he was referring, but felt he probably had them even so.

_"Looks like you finally met your match, kid." Gouto had been just as amused, tail swishing, as Raidou'd doubled over against the wall, panting, his mark long since bolted down another corridor._

Or perhaps not.

"Hah! No." The half-demon snorted. "You don't even know how to run."

Raidou frowned; there was no 'how' to running, as far as he was aware: one simply ran. "I've met few, even amongst grown men, who are faster." 

"Yeah, old men are totally fast." He smirked, and pushed the ball aside. "Look, you take really long strides and that's good for distance running and stuff, but you need to pump your legs quickly if you want to sprint or you won't accelerate fast at all." He did so, slamming his heels against the concrete in an impossibly rapid staccato. "And yeah I know you need to hold your sword, but you don't move either of your arms, and you lean _way_ too far forward." He exaggerated this for effect. 

"No really, I was on the track team for ages, before I started playing soccer." He must have caught notice of Raidou's distinct lack of awe. "Plus your shoes suck and have no grip. And you probably wear sandals all the time so you're totally flat-footed. I guess there's not much you can do about that, though."

Raidou sighed inwardly, bowing to his expertise. To do otherwise might result in a race, and his toes were throbbing. Best to alter the natural course of the discussion before lessons were in order: "Why did you quit running? You sound as if you've a knack for it."

The boy shrugged, prodding the ball with his toe. "It's boring, training by yourself all the time. It's more fun to play on a team."

"But then you have to share all of the glory." Raidou was now the curious one, head tilted; he had never cared much for sports at school, and his training had always been alone. Maybe 'glory' was the wrong word, but his pride was the title it had earned him.

The boy flashed him a grin. "I like it that way. I mean, it's no fun to celebrate by yourself, right?"

Raidou had to concede his point at that. Ever-present, that scent on his collar. 

"So..." The other boy was evidently not to be deterred so easily. He let the ball roll some distance away. "You try and take it from me now."

The summoner exhaled, resigned, and charged forward; the other boy predictably moved in precisely the wrong direction and danced out of his way. No matter which way he tried, even when the other boy came for _him_ , it was always the wrong one and his feet were never fast enough to correct it. 

_Always_ the wrong direction. A sudden flash of insight came to him as he doubled over to catch his breath, undershirt soaked through with sweat. 

It was a feint - the boy was lying with his body, using the movements of his arms and shoulders and posture to deceive him, just as in swordplay. And just as in battle, Raidou knew the solution: look to his feet. His adversary still needed to plant them correctly or he would not move in the right direction, nor at the right speed; his feet could not lie.

This tactic was infinitely more successful and while the half-demon could not tire as the summoner did, he flustered, and laughed, and cried out when Raidou came close to stealing the ball out from under him. "Whoa, hah hah, no you _don't_ \--"

"Yes I _will_." Raidou matched his grin, used a feint of his own, caught him and kicked at that ball with all his might to compensate for his opponent's formidable control. 

The other boy caught a piece of it with his toe and sent it spinning off in the wrong direction, but Raidou had still triumphed, it was travelling at a speed _much_ too fast for even the other boy to catch as the summoner looked on, proudly.

And then promptly realized just where it was headed.

No time in the world for anything but a cry of desperate horror: " _Gouto!_ "

* * *

 

It was much too early to be up; Narumi suppressed a yawn and rubbed his bleary eyes disconsolately at the pale morning sun, wondering what in the world had woken him at this hour. Nothing but a very faint scraping, somewhere in the direction of the office. The boy was back from that queer case at last, so it could be well be him - though he was none the worse for wear save some rather vicious-looking scratches.

Well, it was enough to keep him from his beauty sleep, so he roused himself to investigate. No one but the boy was like to be about this early; he shrugged on a housecoat and padded down the stairs to the curiously unlocked office door.

The boy was on his knees, a suitably abashed flush to his cheek, as he quickly swept the shards of a broken lamp into the dustbin.

Narumi hushed any forthcoming apologies with a wry chuckle, and took a seat beside the checkered ball on the steps. "So, you're a boy after all."


End file.
